Spring Break
Joss Whedon seeks a TV revolution with Horrible
Issue date: 9/25/08
It opens with an evil cackle. Dr. Horrible stares menacingly into the camera. After a pause, he says, "So that's coming along. I'm working with a vocal coach."
The Doctor may have a Ph.D. in horribleness, but he's still struggling to get his dream job, a place in the Evil League of Evil. While he works on his application, he videoblogs from his hole-in-the-wall apartment about his latest exploits, regularly gets pummeled by local hero Captain Hammer, and boils with shyness as he tries to approach his laundromat crush, Penny. When emotions run high, all three characters break into song.
That's just the beginning of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, an internet-exclusive show by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Aside from the singing and Whedon's trademark nerdy, dry humor, what makes Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog unique is its distribution: The film never ran on TV or had a theatrical release, but was instead posted on the official Dr. Horrible Web site where it could be viewed for free and without commercials for a limited time. Now the film is available on Hulu.com, a site that legally streams copyrighted videos with the addition of commercials, but soon the complete series of three installations will be released on DVD.
Joss Whedon has an entrepreneurial imagination and a never-say-die attitude toward his stories, often crossing over media lines to keep his ideas alive after they go off the air. During last year's writers' guild strike he collaborated with his brother Jed Whedon, a composer, to write Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a short musical about a wannabe super villain. Joss funded the project himself "in the low six figures," and shot the three-act, 40-minute film under the aegis of his production company, Mutant Enemy, with a cast of actors from his previous TV shows, featuring cameos by former Buffy writers and producers. The title role is filled by Neil Patrick Harris, while Captain Hammer is played by Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day is Penny.
The Doctor may have a Ph.D. in horribleness, but he's still struggling to get his dream job, a place in the Evil League of Evil. While he works on his application, he videoblogs from his hole-in-the-wall apartment about his latest exploits, regularly gets pummeled by local hero Captain Hammer, and boils with shyness as he tries to approach his laundromat crush, Penny. When emotions run high, all three characters break into song.
That's just the beginning of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, an internet-exclusive show by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Aside from the singing and Whedon's trademark nerdy, dry humor, what makes Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog unique is its distribution: The film never ran on TV or had a theatrical release, but was instead posted on the official Dr. Horrible Web site where it could be viewed for free and without commercials for a limited time. Now the film is available on Hulu.com, a site that legally streams copyrighted videos with the addition of commercials, but soon the complete series of three installations will be released on DVD.
Joss Whedon has an entrepreneurial imagination and a never-say-die attitude toward his stories, often crossing over media lines to keep his ideas alive after they go off the air. During last year's writers' guild strike he collaborated with his brother Jed Whedon, a composer, to write Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a short musical about a wannabe super villain. Joss funded the project himself "in the low six figures," and shot the three-act, 40-minute film under the aegis of his production company, Mutant Enemy, with a cast of actors from his previous TV shows, featuring cameos by former Buffy writers and producers. The title role is filled by Neil Patrick Harris, while Captain Hammer is played by Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day is Penny.
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